UNICEFActivate: "An Inspiration Burst!"

Four young people displayed their innovations and strategies at
the UNICEF Activate Talks that took place June 10, 2014 at the UN
in New York. This Talk was one of a series of talks that
discusses how innovative approaches can help promote child
rights. One of our past bloggers, Aulia, attended a UNICEF Activate Talk in
Indonesia, and blogged about it here on VOY. Today, the
Activate Talk, “Innovative Approaches to Advocate for Child
Rights” discussed whether it's possible for youth and children to
have their voices heard in societies.

Four Activation & Innovation

Saba Ismael from Pakistan, Executive Director of Aware Girls
spoke about women and young girls being leaders and drivers of
change. At the young age of 15 years old, she established Aware
Girls because she “dreamed one day Pakistani girls would enjoy
basic human rights and started working to realize her dream.”

Erik Martin, from the USA, a game designer and student at the
University of Maryland, “designs games that help people change
the world” simply put. Erik spoke a lot about failure and the
need to fail in order to innovate. He thought that if education
systems, embraced failure for the sake of learning, like in
fantsy games,” students would learn more.

Sofia Garcia-Garcia, from Spain, facilitator of the working group
for 'Major Group of Children and Youth' strongly believes that
“lack of participation is the root of the problem.” We need to
have a change in attitude, and when we have this, we will have a
change in innovation. Involvement is key, and “participation
breaks stigma.”

Chernor Bah, from Sierra Leone, youth advocate and leader, and
former refugee, shared his most innovative moment in his life
when he was just 16 years old. It was just after the Civil War,
when many children were being used as child soldiers and a time
when children did not have a voice. What did that want? A voice!
They built a radio program and collected stories and young people
called into their radio show.

Time to Fail!

Have you been told that failure is a good thing? The innovators
and advocates had time to answer questions from both the
moderator, Femi Oke (CNN, Al Jazeera) and from both the audience
in New York and global Twitter audience. Just what were the
innovative approaches and strategies? Failure...and the
passionate advice…fail.

Erik: “So many failures. Failure became something that I could
not care about. You can't innovate without the inability to
overcome failure.”

Sofia: “My work has done things that don't work – for example, we
are not listening to children. Clearly, negotiations are not
working. We need to start accepting failure.”

Do you think that failure is something we should be afraid
of? Do you agree that we need failure in order to be creative?
Share your thoughts, stories, and comments with us!

#UNICEFActivate Talks in One Sentence:

Chernor: “Change happens with youth. Never doubt your power. Be
different than the normal way.”

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Voices of Youth (VOY) was founded in 1995 as UNICEF’s online place for young people to learn more about issues affecting their world. Today, VOY is a vibrant community of youth bloggers from all over the world, offering inspiring, original insight and opinion on a variety of topics. Everyone is welcome to write, film, comment and engage in discussions. Let’s go!